The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.

My basic philosophy of humans is that we are inherently lazy (and always on the lookout for ways through which we can be even more lazy) and as such my predictions for the future are always with that in mind.

My bet is therefore on a combination of eye tracking and voice control making it big in UI's come tomorrow (yes, even in mobile/tablet where touch actually works rather effortlessly).

As for the desktop, having to reach out and touch a desktop screen is never going to gain mass appeal with the lazy unwashed masses (like me), and seriously I doubt a hand gesture based UI will either.

Still there should be some interesting niche uses for this technology, reduz mentioned 3d sculpting which certainly is an interesting proposition.